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The Mysterious 'Medication' of Meditation

WebMD News Archive

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Regina's doctor, Stan Chapman, PhD, tells WebMD because all relaxation
methods involve internal focus and putting distracting thoughts aside,
"they can be effective in reducing pain." Chapman is a pain therapy
specialist, psychologist, and professor at Emory University School of Medicine
in Atlanta. "There's a lot of evidence in the research literature that pain
tends to be worse when people are anxious, or when their muscles are
tight."

Relaxation methods also help with sleep, a major issue for people with pain.
"Many medications people use for sleep have untoward side effects, like
carryover drowsiness during the day which affects their ability to function,
remember, or drive, which is very critical to people," Chapman tells
WebMD.

But in a busy world, if pain relief is not at stake, are people making time
to meditate?

Schneider says that because meditation is a very natural activity, people
easily adopt it as a routine. He reports that in his blood pressure study, 80%
to 90% of people continued doing their daily meditation several months after
the study.

"The jury is in on this; it's not even a question that it works,"
says cardiologist Paul Robinson, MD, of Emory University School of Medicine.
But he has met some resistance.

Meditation has helped some of his patients, he says, but "they have to
be agreeable to the technique and willing to go through what it takes to do
meditation properly. That's one of the drawbacks, because in this country, many
people don't understand it and don't want to take time to do it."

While meditation will reduce some risk factors, like blood pressure and
excessive heart rate, you still have to watch cholesterol, diet, exercise, says
Robinson.

Gordon tells WebMD that aside from the health benefits, meditation changes
the way you look at the world, the way you live your life, and "that's
quite important."

"If you live in the moment and are not preoccupied by the past or
worrying about the future, you've made a profound change," he says. "It
is true that meditation has important physiologic effects in terms of lowering
blood pressure, decreasing heart rate, or decreasing levels of pain, and that's
also important. ? Running may have similar effects, but it doesn?t necessarily
change your life in profound ways. Meditation has the capacity to do
both."